The DOGE playbook for climate disasters: Gut federal climate data, let insurers jack up rates, and bury the financial results.
Across the country, homeowners and housing providers are struggling to afford insurance prices driven up by climate change. The Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is apparently trying to accelerate that trend by gutting the federal climate data sources necessary to model and prepare for disasters, just in time for hurricane season.
The loss of public climate data will hasten insurers’ retreat, as it leaves insurers without a reliable data source to estimate potential losses. Cuts to climate data will also indirectly drive up the costs paid by consumers and taxpayers. Policyholders will invariably pay a price as public climate data sources are decimated, and the only question is how high the price will be.
State insurance commissioners, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), and lawmakers from climate-vulnerable states should be leading the charge to preserve U.S. climate data infrastructure. Instead, a coordinated campaign has narrowed in on the opposite priority: gutting the Federal Insurance Office (FIO), the small group in the Treasury Department responsible for tracking the costs of climate change to insurance consumers. By attacking the Treasury Department’s ability to collect insurance-related climate data, these officials could ensure the data on those collective costs will never reach the public.
By Attacking the Federal Insurance Office, States Shoot the Messenger
In January, FIO published the first and most comprehensive national dataset on how climate change is affecting homeowners’ insurance policyholders. FIO’s report detailed the rising premiums, deductibles, and insured losses that are increasingly cutting into households’ budgets. The data highlighted serious challenges in states like Florida and Louisiana, while revealing troubling trends in the Midwest. While the data only covered a limited set of residential policies and just several years, it represented the first step towards greater transparency and recognition of the tangible costs of climate change after decades of industry secrecy.
Shortly before and after the publication, a group of lawmakers and state regulators, some of whom refused previously to fully participate in the original data collection, have attacked FIO’s power to collect more data moving forward. Introduced in May by Congressman Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), H.R. 3437 would prevent FIO from collecting any additional data from insurance companies. Another bill, H.R. 643, introduced in January by Congressman Troy Downing (R-MT), would abolish FIO entirely.
As DOGE cuts at NOAA threaten to conceal the national tally of billion-dollar disasters, gutting FIO would in turn hide everyday costs paid by consumers through their insurance premiums. Absent a national data collection authority, the public will depend on a weak and fragmented state regulatory system to voluntarily produce a patchwork of data far too slowly to respond to an unfolding crisis — if it publishes any national data at all. Even if the NAIC made a meaningful commitment to publish such data — something it has so far failed to do — it is likely that any effort would be partial and incomplete without the subpoena power held by FIO.
Those legislative proposals were also preceded by demands from a minority of state regulators. Back in November, North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey and North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread called for the elimination of FIO. The following month, nine state insurance commissioners wrote a letter urging DOGE to axe FIO. This March, the NAIC, a trade group that represents state regulators and is now led by Godfread, likewise wrote to Congress listing the abolition of FIO — not climate resilience or preparing for catastrophes — as NAIC’s top priority for Congress. In appealing to DOGE, commissioners from states like Louisiana asked DOGE to eliminate the national office and instead delegate the power to fifty-six different state commissioners — hardly a model of “efficiency.”
Table 1 summarizes how officials in over half of the states have attacked FIO, the federal office with authority to collect climate-related insurance data.
Table 1
Table 2 shows mounting insurance problems in some of the states that have attacked FIO.
Even this snapshot understates the problem, given that the refusal of some states to share certain data means that we don’t know how bad things are in those places. Texas, for example, didn’t provide data on nonrenewals (when an insurer stops providing coverage instead of renewing a policy at the end of the year) or cancellation rates (when an insurer cancels a policy due to nonpayment, alleged fraud, or other factors). So while the table suggests that the state didn’t have any ZIP codes with significant increases in nonrenewal or cancellation rates, it’s likely that some jurisdictions would be in “top 100” had Texas shared data.
Table 2
To Hide From Rising Seas, State Officials Bury Their Heads in the Sand
The states whose politicians and regulators are trying to bury this data are those suffering the most from a climate-driven insurance crisis.
In states like Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, none of which fully participated in FIO’s data collection, the climate crisis has become an imminent financial threat to many households. According to NOAA’s billion-dollar disaster tracker, which is no longer being updated, Florida leads the nation in disaster losses with at least $450 billion worth of damage since 1980. The state similarly contains 37 of the top 100 ZIP codes for insurance cancellations due to nonpayment, suggesting a growing number of households in Florida are no longer able to afford rising premiums.
Louisiana is third in the nation for disaster losses since 1980 at $310 billion. The state also has 43 out of the top 100 ZIP codes across the country for nonrenewals. As large insurers have withdrawn from Louisiana and Florida, small, undercapitalized companies are proliferating and extracting quick profits. Last-resort insurance programs like Florida Citizens and Louisiana Citizens are expanding, setting up what could be a ticking time bomb for policyholders, taxpayers, and the public. What will happen if, in the wake of a catastrophic hurricane, those undercapitalized insurers are unable to pay out claims?
This game of distraction will not only harm communities in the Gulf South. Congressman Troy Downing, who introduced the bill to abolish FIO, represents the wildfire-plagued state of Montana. As longer-lasting and more destructive wildfires threaten Montana, state legislators hope to study the root causes and propose solutions; without granular data, it will be difficult to begin — let alone accomplish — any of those tasks.
Preventing the collection of insurance data will also harm the Midwest in particular, as existing data shows the Midwest is already home to the fastest premium increases and a wave of nonrenewals. Wisconsin, the home of H.R. 3437 sponsor Congressman Scott Fitzgerald, represents an unusual 10% of the top 100 ZIP codes across the country for claims frequency rate. Nebraska policyholders, likewise, have seen “unbelievable” insurance premium increases and the state is home to 5 of the top 100 ZIP codes for nonrenewals, 6 for cancellations, and 8 for claims frequency. While Nebraska Representative Mike Flood has acknowledged the threat to his constituents and Nebraska’s housing market and need for national reform, he has also co-sponsored legislation to prevent further data collection or publication.
In the absence of data, state officials may continue to obscure the root cause of climate-related insurance chaos. State officials in Louisiana, Texas, and Florida have invented an increasingly absurd series of scapegoats such as litigation costs, “woke” ESG insurance companies, and FIO. In some states, regulators and lawmakers back policies that accelerate climate change that will harm consumers. In Texas, for example, lawmakers have sought to prevent insurers from even considering climate-related risks.
Secretive State Turf Wars Turn Climate Disasters into Financial Disasters
There is ultimately no way to hide the reality of climate change from people experiencing disasters and paying through higher insurance premiums. The financial risks from climate change are already too urgent and too apparent. Cutting the tools to monitor the crisis and respond to risks will create a devastating delay for emergency planners and responders, impede the development of targeted investments for communities who need it most, and stymie efforts to develop data-driven solutions and compare the effects of interventions.
Cutting data on the financial costs of climate change will also prevent federal financial regulators from monitoring the potential for systemic risk to the economy. While large insurance companies can continue to profit as premiums rise, consumers are more likely to default on their mortgages and to take on more debt. As large insurers retreat, more households are falling onto subprime insurance that offers less coverage for higher premiums, while ballooning rosters of last-resort programs threaten to send enormous bills to the public when they run out of money to pay claims, as has happened in Florida and California. In the aftermath of back-to-back disasters, unchecked price-gouging, mortgage defaults, and a local foreclosure crisis could impact local and regional banks, creating a financial spiral that would be difficult to recover from.
Leaving it up to states to track the financial risks of climate change is a recipe for fragmentation, inequality, and failure. Instead of building a public database to identify the early warning signs of a climate-driven insurance crisis, too many state insurance regulators are focused on winning a petty turf war with a small Treasury Department office, having failed to prepare for the scale of destruction climate change has in store for the insurance markets they are responsible for protecting. As they ignore the cuts to public climate and weather data and prioritize further cuts to federal data, these regulators are not only failing to address the immediate financial concerns, but blocking others from responding too.
This is no time for turf wars. Climate-driven insurance problems are accelerating: Families are being priced out of their homes. Regional insurers are collapsing. State-run safety nets are swelling unsustainably. And instead of confronting these problems with the full force of public data and oversight, state regulators and lawmakers are working to blindfold the public and hamstring the institutions designed to help.
If Congress and federal agencies allow this campaign to succeed — if they gut the Federal Insurance Office, defund climate data, and surrender to the loudest voices in the room — they won’t just be hiding the cost of climate change. They’ll be helping to cause the next financial crisis.
We need more data, not less. We need stronger oversight, not weaker. And above all, we need leadership that acknowledges what consumers already know: the costs of climate change are mounting — and the longer we look away, the more expensive they’ll become.
See How the Home Insurance Crisis Has Unfolded at the National Scale
Below, you can explore an interactive map depicting how seven insurance metrics have changed over time across the United States. Be sure to check out the accompanying report.
Photo: An aerial view of damage from Hurricane Ian in Lee County, Florida. Taken in September 2022 by state officials and licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.